a spoonful of stevia (helps the advocaat go down)
by zedille
Summary: Captain America wants to go on a date, several cartoonists have too much fun with the geosymbolic implications thereof, and Maria Hill cannot hire lawyers fast enough. / snippets from a crackfic au now abandoned: set immediately after, and disregards anything that came after, CAP2/TWS. Voicemails 'verse, sequel to Missed Calls 2: Positive Signs


_I was, at one point, planning on doing a sequel to the two voicemails fics, but I never figured out where this one was going (Cap and Maria go on a fake date to throw off the media, for ... reasons?) These two snippets have enough jokes and read well enough that I thought I'd dust them off and throw them online. This dates from summer 2015, when I was working at a healthcare company and had to watch too many training videos about maintaining patient confidentiality. All the lawyers jokes kind of spawned on from there._

 _This is set shortly after CAP2/TWS, before Ant-man and CAP3/Civil War, when Maria Hill is still adapting to working at Stark Industries. I wrote this before Benedict Cumberbatch was cast as Dr. Strange; you're welcome to imagine him in the role if you'd like, but I was working with Jon Hamm, Tom Hardy, or Joaquin Phoenix._

 _To everyone waiting for the next chapter of_ hold your head up _: it's coming, eventually..._

 _Thanks for reading! 19 Dec 2016_

* * *

 **Stevia** : a sweetener and sugar substitute extracted from the leaves of the plant _Stevia rebaudiana_

 **Advocaat** :  
1. _Dutch:_ an alcoholic drink made from egg yolks, brandy, and sugar  
2 _. Dutch:_ lawyer

* * *

brief summary of the relevant bits of Missed Calls 2, the previous fic: due to a paperwork mixup when importing SHIELD's HR database, everyone thinks Maria's pregnant. Tony, being Tony, sees she was living with Stephen Last Name Redacted and assumes this was Steve Rogers. Maria Hill comes back from her vacation visiting family in Canada to find that crack has ensued in her absence.

* * *

HR had not prepared her for this.

It wasn't just the entire business where the world thought she was pregnant with Captain America's love child. The SHIELD data Natasha leaked had included her dress and catsuit sizes (though she grumpily noted that _Natasha_ 's real dress size had stayed secret), and that had been thoroughly debated in "Who Wore It Better?" features. After that, being shamed for a scandalous single pregnancy and defiling America's hero was nothing new.

So, spurious attacks on her character — that was fine, nothing she hadn't dealt with every day at SHIELD. And to be fair to HR, she'd sat through enough seminars on inappropriate workplace relationships that that wasn't anything new, either. The combination, however…

The conversation had started so normally. Captain Rogers indicated he was glad she was back at the Tower. He hoped she had enjoyed her vacation, and that she would enjoy working here. Fine, fine, and fine. He was very sorry about what had happened in her absence, only to be expected, and regretted his own role in the escalating the scandal. Well, he wasn't familiar with the modern gossip rag circuit, since SHIELD had bribed them to stay away from him, that was understandable too.

"I'd like to make it up to you," he said. "Let me buy you dinner."

Maria's train of thought regarding what she was going to do to that insurance agent came to a screeching halt. "What?" she said blankly.

"Dinner, you and me," said Steve. "That's how it's done these days, right? I really am sorry about the card, but Clint explained it all to me."

"Um," she said, as her life, or at least the depressingly large portion of it spent in SHIELD's HR seminars, flashed before her eyes. Maria had dealt with her share of inappropriate proposals before, from oversexed junior agents and inebriated men at bars, but the confirmation that Barton was handing out interpersonal advice threw her.

There were two things she could, and should, have said, either of which would have ended the entire business there.

Unfortunately, what she said was neither of these.

"... I'm Canadian," she said.

* * *

Maria had mostly forgotten about this conversation by the time she reached the Greenwich brownstone she shared with Stephen Strange (also known as Stephen Last Name Redacted in her leaked SHIELD file), or so she rather unsuccessfully tried to persuade herself.

"… I can't believe I told Captain America I'm _Canadian,_ " she said glumly, as Strange rubbed her feet. (Say what you would about SHIELD's catsuit regulations, but their boots were more ergonomic than the work-appropriate heels that Pepper's stylist had selected for her.) "I could have told him that going out with him would break every professional code on the planet. Or, you know, that I'm _already in a relationship_. Instead, I just told him I'm Canadian. I don't think it quite got through to him."

"I'd wondered what these were about," said Strange, handing over a stack of supermarket gossip tabloids. The headlines started at "O CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN" and only got worse from there.

"Fury's toupées," she muttered. "Could you pass me a pen?"

Strange gestured with one scarred hand. A pen floated to her from the coffee table. "Thanks," she said, and began scribbling a note to herself on the cover of one of the tabloids. "I'll have to find a defamation lawyer to deal with this. I knew there was something I was missing today."

She had spent all day interviewing lawyers of various stripes. "And how did that go?" he said.

Maria rolled her eyes. "I have to find an immigration lawyer to deal with my visa, a firm to replace Dickey Fuller and Associates, a firm to sue them for breach of contract, a firm to deal with the civil suit they filed against the Avengers for the destruction of their office building, and a firm to investigate their ethics in filing a class-action lawsuit against an estate they're also representing. Oh, and someone to deal with that civil suit about Insight they're filing. And that's just what came up after we left to visit my family in Canada." She was ticking the companies off on her fingers. "They're still trying to figure out what to do with SHIELD, so I need some tax, real estate, and bankruptcy lawyers to help with distribution of assets, aviation lawyers because the FAA's breathing down my back for Insight, admiralty lawyers because the Helicarrier apparently falls under maritime jurisdiction, _more_ lawyers to help me deal with Congress, the Departments of State, Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, not to mention extradition and legal aid for all of SHIELD's former employees, including me, except those who turned out to be Hydra, who have to be prosecuted. Thankfully I don't have to organize that. And of course, we did some redactions on the version of the SHIELD database that Natasha leaked, but I'll have to hire some identity theft lawyers too since I know there were some Social Security numbers in there. And some compliance lawyers for — what was it, Hippo?"

"You mean _HIPAA_? But you're not a healthcare provi — ah." He whistled. "You deliberately released the personal information of, what, ten thousand SHIELD employees. I wouldn't want to think about that fine."

"More than that, with their spouses and families thrown in. Don't remind me." She shuddered. "I don't have the budget I used to since Hydra laundered half of it and the rest of it is going to pay all these lawyers, and this is just what's going on domestically, never mind internationally. Which reminds me, given the way things are going, I should probably find an estate planner, but I can hardly do that on company time."

"You should hire lawyers to hire lawyers for you. At this rate, you'll be able to open your own bar association," he said. "I mean, I would have thought you'd be getting offers to get all this done pro bono? _"_

"Oh, _Captain America_ has firms falling over themselves to offer him services, but no one wants to spend their [charity hours] sending cease-and-desist letters to manufacturers of knockoff merchandise, Captain America or not, when they could be billing me through the nose for everything."

She had picked up another of the tabloids and was paging through it idly, before a particularly egregious Photoshop job depicting her as Maid Maria to a Captain America in hood, mask, and tights caught her eye.

"… surely the obvious thing would have been to cast Barton as Robin Hood," said Strange mildly. There was a suspicious curve to the corner of his mouth.

"The Avengers have too many lawyers and not enough tights to be Robin Hood and his Merry Men." She sighed. "I suppose I should just be glad they haven't come up with one of those portmanteau couple names yet."

"Pardon?" said Strange, who sensibly neither read gossip magazines, nor was in possession of a job that required him to deal with them.

"Pepper Potts and Tony Stark are Pepperoni, which is charming. Everyone likes pizza. But can you imagine what mine and Captain America's would be?"

Strange thought about it. "Stevia?"

" _NAFTA_ , more like," said Maria. "Or no, we'd only be NAFTA if we had a threesome with someone from Mexico. NORAD, maybe."

"You can go track Santa together," said Strange. "Tell him I said hello."

"Who, Santa or Captain America? The former is more your line of business, and I'm sure the latter would just love to meet you, considering I'm in a relationship with you. Why didn't I just tell him that? Oh, right, because the last time he was around, Canada was still just a Dominion—"

"Is that a beaver making a baked Alaska?" said Strange blankly. "I'm not even going to pretend to follow the logic there."

Never mind the lawyers: Maria was going to sic the Hulk on that magazine's publisher's office the next time he was around.

* * *

 _Miss Mary had a 'carrier  
the 'carrier had a bell  
Miss Mary went to work for Stark  
the 'carrier went to _— [1]

[1] the Helicarrier went to Phil, actually.


End file.
